Dance Lest We All Fall Down Review

Dance lest we all fall down is a very intriguing story about a woman's change from an ethnographer and anthropology teacher to the co-founder of a ngo. This book is not an ethnography or a memoir. Possibly an auto-biography of sorts but the point of this book is not to tell a section of this woman's life. Instead it is unraveling the structure of an ngo and showing that the ngo is based on cooperation and lots of patience. This is not a story of the noble American going into a shanty town and giving the community something the American thinks they need.

I was intrigued by this book. It read like a story and was very colorful. The conversations were insightful and thought provoking. While some did not like this book because it is very unlikely that the author could remember her conversations in such detail, I read the conversations as a way she was talking out an idea in her head. Sometimes talking out an idea in conversation form can help one come to conclusions one would not normally come to; even if these conversations are in one's head. Yet I do believe she had most of the conversations that are in the book.

There were many situations in the book that forced me to think about things I never would have thought about. Like the concept of foreigner. Or how Americans and Brazilians view inequality in different concepts: Americans through the idea of race and Brazilians through the idea of class.

There were also many great quotes I loved in this book.

• “The city and companies invest a great deal in all these Christmas lights and decorations. They think then we poor people won’t notice the rotted walls they cloak, the decaying infrastructure. Personally, I think the money might be better spent on education and feeding people.”
• Constantly they urged me to buy, something. I refused and grew increasingly uncomfortable acutely aware that my ability to buy these goods underscored and reinforced the economic, class, and racial differences between them and me.
• In a society where he had control of nothing else, capoeira angola gave him the possibility of internal control and self-respect.
• the dance of Carnival held more meaning than that. It also embodied poverty, death, and annihilation.
• Time and time again, I was reminded how credibility has less to do with knowledge or information given, but instead with the class and power of the person making the statement.

Overall I think this is a book worth reading especially if you are going through an anthropology program.